Textbooks need the whole story

Shannon Speed, For the Express-News

Published
4:00 pm CST, Thursday, November 20, 2014

I teach Native American Studies and virtually none of my university students has had any education in the history of this country’s treatment of the approximately 10 million people who lived here before the Europeans arrived. They generally believe the continent was wide open, and that the few people here aided the Pilgrims with a harvest fest and then, after a few skirmishes with settlers, complied with their destiny as the vanishing Indian.

The Texas State Board of Education wants to reinforce this knowledge gap, forcing high schoolers to learn a sanitized version of history in the name of being “pro-American.” The board recently voted to allow state-defined curriculum for the Advanced Placement History Exam to trump that of the federally-defined curriculum, a move to sidestep aspects of U.S. history they find distasteful.

The board deadlocked on a vote to give this plan final approval earlier this week, which means it will make a final decision Friday.

The board took this measure even though it is certain to disadvantage high school students on the AP test. It feels the purpose of teaching history, as one member recently stated, is to “teach students to be proud American citizens.”

But as a professor at Texas’ flagship university, I have found these omissions to have the opposite effect. My students are usually surprised to find they have been provided a white-washed version of history. They are often outraged. They feel lied to. Omission of the truth is, in fact, a form of lying.

The purpose of teaching history is to create critical thinkers capable of meaningful participation in a democratic society. Texas is often failing to do that.

The SBOE found the new curriculum to be “anti-American” because it includes “negative aspects” of history. Pat Hardy, a board member, said, “To me there was a negativity to the standards, and very few positives about America were found.”

While the school board claims the problem is anti-American bias, the material is not a matter of interpretation. The U.S. expanded by systematically eliminating Native Americans under policies and acts of Congress with names like “removal,” “reorganization,” “termination” and “relocation.” Millions died, and millions of acres of their land were taken from them.

These are historical facts. Providing our students with a strictly “positive” version of U.S. history does not produce proud Americans.

Native Americans are among the most patriotic people I know. They serve in the armed forces in disproportionately high numbers, with the highest troop-to-population ratios of any racial or ethnic group. No powwow begins without the entry of the Honor Guard, and the posting of the American flag alongside state and tribal flags. My own tribe begins its annual meeting with the pledge of allegiance.